Investigating Persuasive Strategies Used by Iraqi EFL University Students' Product-and Process-Oriented Writing

Persuasive strategies are essential parts of academic writing because they enable writers to present ideas in a convincing and organized way that influences the reader’s beliefs or attitudes. The current study is intended to investigate the persuasive strategies used by Iraqi EFL university students’ product-and process-oriented writings. It also focuses on three PSs such as (logos, ethos, and pathos). The objectives of the study are identifying the PSs used by Iraqi EFL university students in their product- and process-oriented writings , finding out the most and the least used PSs by Iraqi EFL university students in their product -oriented writing , finding out the most and the least used PSs by Iraqi EFL university students in their process-oriented writing and depicting the difference between the Iraqi EFL university students who use the PSs in their product- and process-oriented writings. To achieve the objectives of the study four questions are formulated. A quantitative method is adopted in the present study in relation to data analysis and collection. The sample of the study consists of (200) male and female students who study at the Department of English at College of Education for Human Science at Wasit University, College of Imam Al-Kadim, and the University of Al-Kut. Students’ written texts were collected and analyzed according to the procedures of analysis. The data were statistically analyzed using weighted mean, weighted percentage, standard deviation, variance, and t-test. The findings revealed that Iraqi EFL university students employed logos, ethos, and pathos in their writing, with logos being the most frequently used persuasive strategy in both product- and process-oriented writings. Ethos and pathos were used less frequently due to students’ limited rhetorical awareness and linguistic competence. The results also showed that process-oriented writings was more effective than product- oriented writings in enhancing students’ use of persuasive strategies. This was confirmed statistically by the higher arithmetic mean achieved by the process-oriented group (22.34) compared to the product-oriented group (17.25), as well as the calculated t- test value (2.707), which exceeded the tabular value (1.960), indicating a statistically significant difference in favor of process-oriented writings.